Mai values interdisciplinary potential of academic research

Professor James Mai’s research interests as an artist are quite broad, and his studio works range in size from small geometric paintings to large panoramic photos of immense architectural sites. His work encompasses some things that are new and photos of things very old, each of which brings home the fact that the way we engage the world is always a process, ever-changing and never static.

Now in his 10th year at Illinois State, Mai teaches painting and drawing classes and coordinates the School of Art foundations classes, which provide freshmen with an introduction to the language of visual arts. A painter by training, with BFA and MFA degrees from the University of Wyoming, Mai is passionate about his research and its interdisciplinary nature. His work crosses paths with mathematics, philosophy, architecture, history, astronomy and more.

“I value the interdisciplinary potential of academic research,” he said, “and I try to carry that experience into the classroom here at Illinois State. Art can function as a vital nexus for all other studies, bringing diverse ideas together and translating them into the language of vision.”

Mai’s research falls into three areas: color relationships, geometric composition, and panoramic photography of temple architectures. His work in color relationships addresses seemingly simple questions such as, “is red always red and green always green?” The answer: not always; sometimes red can look like green, and green can look like red.

“In these paintings, I’m deeply interested in those color relationships that reflect back to us the subjective nature of our perceptions,” Mai said. “Color is not ‘out there’ as a stable aspect of an object, but rather is a highly changeable sensation that resides in our eyes and brain. We are largely unaware of this in our everyday lives, and I like the fact that a painting can raise philosophical questions about our assumptions of subjectivity and objectivity.”

To visualize this idea Mai will, for instance, make a composition with a red line that crosses over a variety of colored rectangles. The color of each rectangle acts upon the red line, causing the red to change its color identity, from brighter to duller, from warmer to cooler, from lighter to darker. He makes these color interactions in paintings and in digitally produced prints.

“I’m investigating illusionary change that tells us that color perception, and perhaps all of our experience, is really contextual.”

Mai’s paintings investigate not only intricate color relationships, but also precise geometric and shape relationships.

“Although I’m not a mathematician, I am also interested in logical and quantitative relationships among shapes as a basis for compositions. I have been particularly interested in combinatorial and permutational processes to generate new forms,” he said. “I also write academic papers to give verbal explanations to the theoretical aspects of my color and composition investigations. These are aimed at interdisciplinary audiences of mathematicians and artists.” Mai has presented and published these papers at conferences in the U.S. and Europe.

Mai’s paintings have been seen in galleries and exhibitions throughout the U.S. and abroad, and from November through January his work will again be shown as part of the Faculty Biennial Exhibition in the University Galleries.

Although Mai pursues his paintings indoors in his studio, his third area of interest takes him outside. Way outside. He produces carefully designed panoramic photographs of “cosmic” architecture sites across the world. These are temples and architectural precincts that are designed to align with celestial motions and to acknowledge symbolically important locations in the landscape. Mai has photographed temple sites from India to Guatemala, from Crete to New Mexico, including such places as the Maya site of Copan in Honduras and Stonehenge in England.

Mai’s interest is not merely to document the architectures, but to reveal their cosmological purposes and symbolism. “Sometimes these structures, like the temples in India, are built as microcosms, abstracted and smaller-scale versions of the cosmic mountain at the center of the Hindu universe,” Mai said. “My interest in these places is in their experiential complexity, the ways that the architectural spaces act upon human consciousness. The photographs share with the paintings a common interest in how contexts determine experience.”

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